It has been becoming increasingly longer in between updates, but that is because I have been on vacation for the last 4 weeks and updating LJ hasn't been the highest priority as of late. But soon vacation is over and the updating and the fun starts again.

So I am guessing that now is as good as time as any for a general update.

As most of you know, I went to Palma de Mallorca with Alex and that was a lot of fun. And then Alex took me to Örnsköldsvik to see how life in the Northern part of Sweden is. And I have to say that I liked it up there as a vacation point, even though I am not sure that I could live there. It is not because anything is bad up there at all. Rather, it has more to do with the fact that I am a city guy at heart and I don't know that I would be able to make the transition so very easily.

While we were up there, we went hiking up a mountain. On the way up we followed the trail up and that was really nice. Picking and eating blueberries along the way. It was really nice and relaxing up there. Here are some photos...we are 270 meters (886 feet) above sea level. But first a really bad video of me going up the mountain...35 minutes in, badly prepared, and well...the video speaks for itself :-/

(of course the obligatory picture of the summit sign)

(a picture of me at the top of the summit)

(and a picture of Alex at the top of the summit)

(and of course, Alex cannot be without a mobile so he accepts a call at the top of the mountain ;)

While the hike up was great, the hike down was a different story entirely. Alex had decided that we would take a route that he and his father once took about 10 years ago. Unknown to me, it wasn't just off of the official path, but also a path that only they had known, that was an animal path (there's a difference apparently...the animals stay away from the human trails), and that he seemed surprised that had grown over so quickly in 10 years time. That meant that we had to do a lot of improvision to get back to the bottom. One of my knees got pretty banged up on the way down, I feel a few times, and one of my legs fell into what I can only hope was a snake hole (but luckily no snakes). We were both dehydrated so we drank from the streams on the way down (if it's good enough for animals...) But low and behold...we made it back.

So that is it for this installment. To keep things small and reasonable, I'm going to put things up in several updates over the next days...including more on Ö-vik (with pictures) and a recap of Stockholm Pride.